Destroyer
by Ankh-Ascendant
Summary: Sesshoumaru has been captured by Naraku, who once again wants his power. It seems that this time, though, he wants something more... He wants to destroy him first. Torture and gore fic, little yaoi connotation.


_TITLE_: Destroyer

_AUTHOR_: setosgirl  
_DATE_: 8-14-10 - 8-21-10  
_FANDOM_: Inuyasha  
_DISCLAIMER_: I don't own Inuyasha.  
_PAIRINGS_: technically none, possible Naraku/Sesshoumaru connotations  
_TYPE_: gore... does that count as Drama?  
_OCs_: none

_CHAPTER_: Oneshot, or maybe 1/3  
_RATING_: T+/MA  
_WORDS_: 4756  
_WARNINGS_: torture. Almost five thousand words of torture. You could also consider it a take on MPREG.

_SUMMARY_: Sesshoumaru has been captured by Naraku, who once again wants his power. It seems that this time, though, he wants something more... He wants to destroy him first.

_NOTES_: When I say gore, I mean it. This story is written as an excuse to very literally destroy Sesshoumaru (because I like him, not because I hate him). It features explicit descriptions of gore and torture, and is an example of the _guro_ fetish or style, involving gore and amputation. I'm considering, if this has an audience and/or I feel like it, writing two more chapters – the second having different kinds of torture, possible but pretty unlikely N/C included, and the third involving humiliation and pity/sympathy (since that is a large appeal of it to me; why ruin a boy unless there is someone to acknowledge how bad it is?). That is only a possibility, however. I would like to hear your thoughts. If, however, you find it a bit much, I have to say I warned you.

Destroyer

PART 1

Golden eyes opened to darkness.

The prisoner lifted his head from the floor. His heightened sight made sense of faint shades undetectable to humans, resolving the darkness into irregular patterns of rises and depressions that resembled nothing he was aware of. His sharp ears heard a faint pulsating, a heartbeat originating from nowhere, and as he moved a creak, as of wood. More importantly still, his nose was filled with only one scent, a pungent, rotting stench.

"Naraku," he breathed.

Around his throat, something tightened with his word like a living collar, pressing on his windpipe without cutting off breath, telling him for the moment only that it was there... but that it could, if it chose, decide to strangle him. Not that he would allow it to be there that long. He jerked his head with moderated strength to break it, only to have his neck snapped to a stop at the end of its length, a length that he discovered no amount of strength or straining could pull it past.

That wasn't all that he discovered. Moving awakened his limbs in a rush of needle-pains all up his arm and his legs; they had been so far asleep he had not even realized he could not feel them. He twisted his head in its bond to look, finding his arm bound at the wrist above his head in what seemed like a protrusion of the wall. It was pulled back to put his shoulder at an awkward angle that would make sitting up any further painful even if he could. His legs were spread, wide, with his knees under him, forcing him to kneel with his chest parallel to the rough floor. They were bound not only at the ankle but up to the knee where the floor grew partially over them, and he could not yet move them enough to test the strength of those bonds. Even what was left of his left arm was bound beneath and around the shoulder to the floor; that limb he could move easily, but there was no strength in it. How long he had been in this position to lose his circulation so badly, or to what end, he could not guess.

Even so, he knew by whom.

"Naraku," he called again coldly, barely raising his voice. As he spoke he twisted his dead hand, forcing it to wake, and sank the claws into the hard material that pulled it toward the ceiling. The smell as he released his venom into it was bitter and acrid - not the smell of his toxin, but the smell of it mixing with another volatile poison.

"I wouldn't do that."

He hadn't heard a step. The collar dug into his neck as he jerked his head around, teeth already slightly bared. Naraku stood at the edge of his vision behind him. He didn't have to see him clearly; smirking, red eyes glowing faintly in the darkness, spikes rising from his back, he would not have looked more at home stepping directly out of Hell.

"That," Naraku repeated, stepping calmly up between his spread legs and grabbing his fingers. He pried them from the manacle without seeming to struggle. A drop of venom fell from a claw and sizzling on the floor without doing any harm. "Don't think I had forgotten that talent. I've modified my poison to react... poorly, with yours. If you'd rather keep trying until the gas eats away your lungs, though, I'll wait."

He would have liked to believe Naraku was lying, but he wasn't; the smell was already burning his nose painfully - most poisons were simply ineffectual against him, and he could not be bluffing. Still, he refused to answer, seeing instead the ramifications of that poison. He realized that whatever bound him was less like wood or stone and more like the bony protrusions that made Naraku's spikes; with the poison, then, they were within Naraku, or within something he had created of himself or his cast-off pieces. Naraku meant, yet again, to absorb him and his power.

This time he did not have Tenseiga to keep him at bay. His hand clenched, claws swiping for Naraku's hand - missing - but that did not change the fact that his sword was gone, with his clothes and armor, and the fur that draped around him would offer little protection and little chance of freeing him.

"Don't you have anything to say?" Naraku's fingers, blunt and disgustingly human fingers, ran gently down the back of his hand, openly unafraid of his claws.

"You are going to die." He twisted his head to give a cold glare over his shoulder.

A silky chuckle came from his captor. "I've heard that before, Sesshoumaru..."

He stared unblinking at the dark form behind him. This was far from the weak human puppeteer wearing a stinking pelt and deferentially calling him by his proper title, as he offered a dead human arm so that he could use his brother's sword. If he had seen the threat that was within him then... But he had not until Naraku had gained the confidence to openly antagonize him. Folly, it had been and still was, for Naraku to think he would win this, ever... Yet he should have killed him long ago.

Naraku's red eyes themselves seemed to smirk at him, before they shifted over to his hand, where his fingers still avoided his claws and ran over the backs of his knuckles. "You've been hard to catch," he mused. "I don't even need you any more, of course... compared to mine, your power is negligible. All you have is brute strength and sheer obstinacy - you're too dumb to know when you're outmatched."

He couldn't help himself against a surge of contempt and rage - no one described him like _Inuyasha_! The urge to destroy was overwhelming and he gave in to it, twisting his arm to sink his claws into Naraku's, yanking him forward at the same time that he lunged with teeth halfway through transforming into a muzzle. The collar yanked him up short, digging into his throat and squeezing, but still he snarled and strained against it, and all of the bonds. He _was_ going to break them and rip Naraku's throat out...

A hand wound into his hair and jerked his head back, and he was forced to looked straight up into Naraku's face - so tantalizingly near, so close to being able to tear it off. He lunged upward to reach it despite the pain, but he had only to pull back a little to escape his teeth.

"Go on," Naraku invited, his voice calm and amused. "Transform, tap your whole power. If you think these walls will give, you're mistaken. You'll be turning yourself into a pile of pathetic, steaming dog guts. Not even your youki will regenerate you from that."

He growled and ceased the transformation, unwilling to admit Naraku was right, just as unwilling to kill himself. Even dimmed intellect could see Naraku was telling the truth, even if it wouldn't admit it. He had begun to grow, but the bonds that grew out of the walls had not shattered or cracked and only pressed painfully into his arms and legs and neck. If he continued and it would not break he would destroy his body.

The hand released his hair, and then stroked it in a disgusting mockery of fondness. "You are such an animal."

He struggled with the rage, and snapped at Naraku's hand but managed to resume his human form. "You are a _thing_."

Naraku only chuckled. "A thing who has you right where I want you." He pried Sesshoumaru's claws from his arm and kept hold of them firmly. "You do have some useful powers."

He declined to respond. He didn't trust himself to do so without giving in to the simmering rage again.

"That little sword, for instance. It's a useless stick to me, but to you... It fought to stay with you, you know." He twisted Sesshoumaru's hand around, inspecting it and pretending not to notice how he made him grit his teeth. "I can see the use in a sword like that, if it would obey me. A sword that won't let you get killed, and a sword that will let you escape from Hell if you are."

"Tenseiga will not suffer your touch," he snapped. He may not have wanted it, but Tenseiga was _his_ and had chosen _him_, and Naraku would not even dare to covet it, much less speak as though he already owned it, not if it was in his power to prevent. His claws scratched vainly at the air, straining for him again.

His fingers were snatched in he air and held tightly together, pulled straight. "Oh no... not mine..." Naraku ran a finger down his palm, and he growled almost inaudibly. At least, Naraku didn't seem to hear it. "But yours..."

There were vicious hooked bone spikes that ran the length of Naraku's forearm on a false bracer; he set the tip of the last one against his wrist, and Sesshoumaru only had time to realize what he was going to do before he swept his arm back.

It was over in that one motion. Blood spurted from the hole where his hand had been, the smell and sight of it stronger at first than the pain, staining Naraku's hands slightly but mostly flowing back down his arm and soaking into his fur. He saw the claws of his severed hand clench convulsively, once, twice, and then go still. Horror and rage mingled as he watched Naraku admire his prize, smelling his blood heavy in the air. He could reattach it - if he could get it back, he could reattach it. If Naraku absorbed it, though...

Naraku's right hand simply fell off, as though it had been shed, bloodlessly, and he held his hand to the end of his arm. There was that choking smell of mixing toxins again, but Naraku's obviously won and it faded before it grew dangerous. The bony plates grew up around the wrist and secured the hand. It was already moving of its own volition as Naraku tested it out, admiring the claws. It looked ludicrously delicate compared to the rest of him; fine long fingers and claws suited Naraku as well as the wings of a butterfly would have. He didn't seem to mind it.

"I think this will do," he mused, and flexed the claws again. "I'll have to test it with the sword. I thought you would have screamed, though."

The clasws ran from the end of his arm down to his elbow, lightly caressing his skin. A low growl bubbled in his throat; he swallowed it, barely. "I have lost worse," he said instead, twisting his arm away from Naraku. The bleeding had already stopped, the end of his arm probably healed over; the pain wasn't yet gone, but he had, as he said, had far worse than that deep ache. It was his pride that hurt most of all right now.

A low chuckle came again, and then Naraku's heavy blunt hand fell on the end of his other arm, what was left of it. "Of course," he agreed, lifting that stump so that he could inspect it. "Not even at my hands."

The digging at his wounded pride was too much; he twisted and snapped his teeth at Naraku, forgetting for the moment that he couldn't reach. His own hand can from behind him and smashed his head into the floor.

"Fast," Naraku said in approval, as he pulled his head up and spat blood on the floor from his broken lip.

He chose not to answer. Instead he stared at the floor, fighting with rage. Naraku dared...

"I should let you go now." Claws trailed down his arm, but he didn't move. "It would be amusing to just set you free, with no hands to hold a sword even if you had one, no claws to shred anyone. What's more pathetic than a three-legged dog? The great Sesshoumaru... the amazing two-legged dog."

With his silence, he willed him to do just that. With enough time and seclusion he would regenerate the lost hand, since the wound was not made by Tetsusaiga... then he would come rip Naraku's head from his shoulders.

"You know I'm not going to."

Claws sank suddenly deep into his upper arm, pressing through flesh with no resistance. He hissed but couldn't move his arm away, and refused to give Naraku the satisfaction of watching.

The smell of blood quickly heightened; there was a horrible ripping sound and a bright shard of pain driven up to his shoulder. His jaws locked together against a cry, and he breathed deeply of the blood-tainted air. It was impossible not to look this time.

Flesh had been ripped away with a thick layer of muscle. Exposed muscle quivered and twitched in the warm air, leaking blood that ran down his arm; he saw the hard curve of blood-streaked bone showing through.

"Sharp," Naraku said unnecessarily. He admired his bloody claws, dropping the chunk of meat casually away from him. It hit the floor with a wet sucking noise and stuck there.

Sesshoumaru breathed deeply, controlling the pain, and glared silently at Naraku over his shoulder. The smell of his blood was beginning to make him nauseous. Both pain and pointless cruelty, though, he could handle. It was just more ammunition for his eventual revenge.

Naraku smirked a little at his glare, the only direct response he gave, and dug his claws into the hole in his arm. Sesshoumaru gritted his teeth and prepared himself as well as he could against the expected agony. Slowly the claws peeled the flesh and muscle back, with more slow wet ripping sounds and the excruciatingly slow tearing pain. It rolled up his arm and down to his wrist, mingling with and overwhelming the pain of his severed hand. Strips of flesh were ripped slowly upward until they hung limp from his elbow, streaming weak blood, and the bone of his arm sat naked and exposed halfway around, for half its length, staring at him.

He tasted blood; he had bitten through his lip. Still, he had not displayed any pain, let alone screamed, and that had deprived Naraku of what he wanted, and that was a victory.

"Still nothing?" Naraku wiped bloody claws through his fur, smearing the whiteness with even more red and cleaning his fingers. "Don't tell me you really are made of ice."

"Torture will accomplish you nothing."

"Maybe not... but you don't know what I want."

He looked back at him over the bloody fur. A small rivulet of blood from his arm was winding its way down his chest, dripping to the floor beneath him, clearly audible to his hearing and subtly disturbing. Naraku could want nothing but his death and his power... perhaps to cause him pain in the meantime... Why was he acting as though there were some deeper motivation?

"I said you had some useful powers," Naraku repeated. His smirk looked pleased with himself, pleased at knowing something his victim did not. He patted the shredded arm, sending spikes of pain up to steal his breath, then let his claws train down his back. "Like your speed. Your speed is damned annoying; you would have been dead long ago if you weren't so fast at running."

His chest rumbled with a growl, but he was still battling down the latest wave of pain with too much concentration to answer with words. Claws were running down the outside of his thigh now; his skin twitched but his legs were still immobilized.

"Do you think I could take that speed if I took your legs?" he mused with mock interest.

The bindings holding his leg to the floor slithered away. Sesshoumaru did not pause to think about it, only took advantage of his chance. He twisted and whipped his leg up and back, the claws of his foot ready to shred Naraku's throat.

He was caught by his knee in midair and pulled back. The force pulled his face to the floor and painfully wrenched his shoulder from its socket. Blood gushed down his arm again, and he tasted it in his mouth. For a long moment, as Naraku pulled, there was the uncomfortable feeling of being stretched, his skin seemed about to rip from the pressure. Then the other hand pressed on his back, pushing him into the floor, and the pulling just above his knee redoubled.

He screamed as the weakest point finally gave way. Blood sprayed over the room as skin tore and muscles shredded from their base. His hip twisted and separated, cartilage ripped, and his leg was torn completely from his body.

He lay panting as blood pooled underneath him, barely noticing as it reached his lips and stained them, struggling with shock and sudden blood loss. He felt agony shooting up and down his leg, a phantom but very real feeling he knew from after losing his arm. It drew a high pitched whine between his pants for air.

Something heavy thumped to the floor beside him; muscles flinched in surprise and then screamed in agony, and he bit back another whine, fighting for control of himself. He rolled his head on his chin and looked over. A gory knob of bone stuck from shredded rags of muscle and red-painted skin, staring him in the face. He could still make out a stripe curving over the edge of the hip that was no longer attached to him.

Naraku's face intruded on the view; the dismembered leg was preferable. "You know, I don't think that will give me your speed," he said with a thin smile, and lifted his head by the hair. "Not dying already, I hope?"

He smelled blood... he tasted blood... his sight seemed covered in a thin sheen of it. Without a thought he lunged forward, ripping out the hair that held him back. He could move better with his shoulder dislocated - Naraku tried to pull back, but not fast enough. His teeth sank into the vulnerable soft flesh of Naraku's throat, and he ripped it out, spitting the chunks of flesh even as he went back for another bite. Now the blood pouring over him was not all his own, and it was a much, much sweeter scent, to smell the blood of his enemy.

The collar still held him; it jerked him up short and Naraku managed to back away, bleeding, but laughing, with a horrible gurgling noise that bubbled blood from his neck wound. He didn't even raise a hand to the gash. Blood flowed down his front, painting him red in the darkness; on the floor their blood mixed together and let off the poisonous gas that drifted around them.

"Good," Naraku said - it came out harsh and bubbling and sent more blood rolling down his chest, but Sesshoumaru saw that the edges of his ravaged throat were already knitting together again. The was not even close to killing him. "You're not dying yet after all."

He growled and spat Naraku's blood from his mouth, daring him to come closer again. The surge of youki with his bloodlust had already stopped the bleeding of his leg and his arm, though neither had really healed and he was no closer to regenerating his hand. Even despite that, he felt better now with rage working on blotting out the pain, and he was in no danger. No, he was not even close to dying either.

"I have plans for you. Don't even think of giving up before I get to put them in place."

Naraku did step closer, but behind him and far out of his reach; he didn't get the satisfaction of taking any more chunks out of him. The claws ran down the center of his back, parting his skin more smoothly than any blade, and fresh rivulets of blood rolled down his sides to join the pool on the floor.

Abruptly the claws dug through the muscles and wrapped around his spine; his second scream drowned out the sound of tearing muscles as he ripped it upward. Any other sensation was lost in waves of concentrated agony, seeming to come from everywhere at once. For he knew not how long he could neither see nor hear nor smell, and experienced nothing but the pain.

The first external sensation that he recognized again was the smell of blood, far beneath the pain, and then a dark chuckle that underscored it. He couldn't spare any mental energy from the pain for anger.

Slowly his vision returned, deciphering the darkness again into shapes. His head had been yanked around, and eventually he could see Naraku's free hand wound in his hair, pulling hiim around so that he could see clear over his shoulder; he as sure that was causing pain, somewhere, far down below the agony that was everything else, and the angle and force of it was very dangerously close to breaking his neck, but right now he didn't care.

His eyes fastened on the sight of his spine in Naraku's other hand - still whole, but bent at an unnatural curve, suspended in the air until it disappeared back into the bloody mess of his lower back. Strings of gore stretched from the ragged, torn muscles and flesh to the streaked bone, and a web of twined nerves stretched taut from his body over the top, screaming their unbearable agony. Nerves that had already snapped from the pressure hung limp in the air beneath, alongside broken blood vessels that still streamed blood back into the cavity where his spine was removed.

"I need to do that more often," Naraku said with another chuckle, meeting his eyes to make sure he was listening. There was no sign of the mauling left on his throat, save the streaks of blood. "I think I almost killed you on accident with that."

He was barely paying him any attention. His breath was harsh and whining in his ears; the whines were too high pitched for Naraku's human ears, and he made no effort to stop them - he doubted he could. His eyes drifted back to the blood falling through the air in thin trickles. He had lost so much already... He was about to bleed to death if he didn't stop that. He was going to die here with his spine in Naraku's hands.

No, he was not.

The pain couldn't be put out of mind or ignored, but he gathered what he could of his strength and focused it in a single, brief burst of youki. It wasn't enough to heal him - not with his body disassembled and held partially in his own stolen hand - but the severed lines were healed over enough that he was no longer losing blood into his own hollowed body and the spreading pool painting the floor.

"Hn." He glanced back at Naraku, and saw the false youkai watching the flow of blood slow and stop. "Looks like I still need to entertain you, don't I? I don't want that power turned anywhere else just yet." With a smirk, he glanced up to his face, tugging back on his hair. For a moment he felt sure he meant to pull his head off... In his condition, that would be almost certainly fatal.

Instead, he viciously twisted his spine in the hand that held it, using his own former strength against him.

Instead of more agony, everything below his rib cage disappeared; everything above still burned in agony, but comparatively it was a relief. His surprised breath caught in his throat, and he sagged forward, held up only by the bindings and Naraku's hand in his head. It still yanked his head back at such an extreme angle he could see the severed end of his spine fall back into his body, with a sick splash of pooled blood. Naraku still held up the other end for a moment, watching the blood pouring from severed vein and artery, until he dropped it too with a dark grin.

"That should keep you busy," he said conversationally, wiping his bloody claws in his already sodden fur.

He had no response; he could do nothing but stare as the floor freed his remaining leg and Naraku pulled it out straight behind him. He should have lashed outwith it; he should have used it to destroy him. Instead it only lay there. Never before had he had to experience the horror of being trapped in a body that would not obey him.

Naraku gave him one more dark smirk and set his claws to the back of his thigh. He did not have to feel it this time, but he did have to watch as the claws sliced neatly through his skin, trailing blood, and tore through the muscle beneath. The leg he saw being amputated did not seem to belong to him. The grisly strips of flesh being flayed back belonged to just so much meat; he watched from a mental distance as the poison in the claws dissolved through the bone with a steam of burning blood, and the final connections of muscle and tissue were twisted apart.

He had no limbs. It was a huge fact, not hard to recognize, but Naraku held up the severed leg to drive it home. "And now we have Sesshoumaru, the no-legged dog," he said, tossing it casually aside with the other. The sound was oddly sick; it made him think of carcasses tossed in a pile, of slaughter and disease - things that normally had no effect on him, yet now seemed very morbid. "You're not going to be running anywhere now."

Very true - and yet. It seemed unlikely Naraku would let him live, after making him this helpless, yet, if he did... He could heal from all of this. Missing limbs could be regenerated, the broken back could be repaired, lost blood could be replenished. But only if Naraku let him live.

That, he realized, was no longer his choice. Whether he lived or died was out of his hands entirely; never had be been so powerless. He despised it just as much as he imagined he would.

"Nothing to say?" Naraku wondered, running the bloody claws through his hair... Like petting.

Had he? Not much. "Finish this," he said coolly. After a certain point acceptance came easily, when he could not longer fight it, but that still didn't mean he would sacrifice his pride. At least he would die with whatever dignity a taiyoukai turned into a quadruple amputee could possess.

Naraku chuckled and picked up one of the severed ends of his spine, inspecting it showily, and then finally released his hair so his head could fall back into a natural position. He let it hang, breathing better immediately, watching Naraku only out of the corner of one eye. The pain was turning into cold numbness as he lost blood; the mental distance was possible a gift of the same. Neither one he minded.

Instead of killing him, Naraku seemed to prefer to ignore him, no doubt to draw it out. He stooped to the side, walking through the space where his right leg should have been, and picked up his discarded hand from the floor. "I don't think so," he said.

He narrowed his eyes.

The false hanyou caught his look and smirked. Malice and sadism emanated from him in waves of dark youki. How strong had he gotten? "I said I have a use for your power."

"Then take it." He couldn't stop him.

"Oh, I will... but not for me." He stepped up to his side and pulled apart the gaping wound down his back; pain flared again and he gritted his teeth. With helpless revulsion he watched Naraku drop the severed hand into his back and them pull the wound closed over the top of it, trapping it within.

"What are you doing...?"

"I've found a new container for my offspring." He chuckled and patted the shredded back. "Let's see how they come out after feeding on your youki while they develop."

He couldn't help a dangerous growl - acceptance had a limit. "Naraku! Remove your filth!"

He only laughed and turned away from him, walking back into the darkness.

"Naraku...!"


End file.
